From The Silky Mitten State: Petry and Copp's errors versus the Capitals not ground on which to pin defeat on them
On Tuesday night in Washington, the Red Wings' playoff hopes suffered a major setback in the form of a 4-3 overtime loss to the Washington Capitals.
For Detroit fans, it was a frustrating evening because of the blow to their teams playoff fortunes but also because two of the fan base's preferred scapegoats in Andrew Copp and Jeff Petry were at the center of two errors that contributed to the defeat, both of which were called out by coach Derek Lalonde at his post-game press conference.
For Copp, it was a missed assignment of a lost face-off that led to the Capitals' third goal. For Petry, it was a missed chance to finish into an open net with the Detroit chasing the game in the third period.
“Really disappointed in the third goal,” Lalonde said. “Just, a faceoff, man-on-man, I don’t know what our center was thinking. He lost it clean then he left the center, and that’s the guy that banged it home. Like that’s minor hockey. That’s hockey 101. That was hockey 15 years ago, and that’ll be hockey 15 years from now. Just really disappointed in that one.”
“[He] probably scores that nine out of 10 times,” Lalonde said. “I don’t know what [happened]—maybe he got surprised with how much room and space and net he had, and it just kind of blew up on him.”
On the most recent episode of The Silky Mitten State, my co-host Connor Earegood and I discussed the sense that—frustrating though Tuesday's game may have been—to pin the outcome on two players is a reductionist and unfair assessment. For a sample of that conversation, check out this clip:
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